May 11, 2006

Tudo De Bom

Back in 1992, I had the pleasure of spending 3 months touring Brazil. A majority of my time was spent in the southern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Land locked and picturesque, I had an extremely memorable time there. When I first heard about Tudo De Bom, I was excited -- I loved Brazilian barbecue (churrasco).

It took me a while to get here, but I finally did. That was almost 6 months ago. Recently, I returned with a couple of friends for dinner. At the front door, you'll see the menu which lists the meats available during dinner (weekends offer a wider selection) as well as a list of some of the buffet items that are offered.

(click on the photo for a better view)

Rodizio is what's normally served in churrascarias, which is what Tudo De Bom is. When we arrived on a Thursday night at 7:00 pm, the restaurant was about half full.

Brazilians like beef, so many of the meat selections here consist of a number of beef cuts and preparations -- top sirloin, garlic steak, pepper steak and beef tenderloin. Sausages (two types), chicken, pork tenderloin and lamb round out the rest of the menu. There is a nice sized buffet selection and a salad bar. All this for $19.95. Good deal?

At first glance, the all-you-can-eat concept seems like a bargain. In the end, what really matters is not what cuts of meat are served (though this is important), but how quickly the food turns over and how quickly it is replenished and served to the customer. This is where Tudo De Bom fails.

In Brazil, you can expect meat to be constantly delivered to your table which will definitely lead to overeating. Here it can sometimes be a lengthy wait. At times, we waited up to 20+ minutes for a server to pay us a visit. In addition to this, the evening's meat selections are not always available -- we asked for lamb and it arrived 1 hour and 20 minutes into the meal. The server, though, was nice enough to mention that spaghetti was available instead (can you imagine spaghetti at a churrascaria?).

And while the meat was well seasoned, sometimes too salty even, it was moist and tender. The buffet was missing some Brazilian standards like farofa, couve or even polenta, but included a wide selection of Western ones like the aforementioned spaghetti as well as mashed potatoes and Caesar salad.

Dinner here was a long one (we spent well in excess of three hours to finish our meal) and when we left, we were actually more tired than full. Tudo De Bom offers a great alternative to the usual steakhouse fare, but with a fair amount of wait time between servings, the experience here left much to be desired.

Comments

Wow Reid! Since Mother's Day is coming up, we were just contemplating on going to a Brazilian brassierie in Long Beach called Greenfield's. Kind of pricey but the food is good and non-stop. They have every kind of meats you can think of served by people coming around to each table with hot skewers. Not to leave out the serve-yourself buffet on the side too. Now you got me salivating!

Just finished dinner at Greenfield's in Long Beach. I can't move and feel 10 pounds heavier. The place was jammed pack and the food was excellent as usual. The ribeye, sausage, and roasted lamb were my favorites. I wonder how our food would compare to your Brazilian place? Looks very similar and delicious.

Do they serve plantains? Oh man, I believe Brasilian food is similar to Cuban? The best Cuban food ever is at Versaille in L.A. -- the Garlic Chicken with black beans and plantains or platanos -- culinary bliss. But I digress.

I saw fried bananas at our place here in LA but it could have been plantains? Once, my Panamanian friend introduced us to some fried plantains along with cod fish balls and a thing called "souse" which is pig feet with certain spices. Interesting dishes like curry empenadas from the West Indies was also different.

It’s rather not the best place for this, but I'll take my chance that you gonna find it...

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Hi Reid - Good to see you solidly back in action. I waited until you finished before commenting. It seems that the price is right, but service is very slow, that's like the kiss of death for a rodizio-style Churrascaria. We have one in San Diego, and while the salads(including marinated hearts of palm - mmmm) and the service is good. The meat is not seasoned well, and the price for dinner hovers around $30 - it's more of a novelty-entertainment kind of thing, bummer. We used to love Greenfields, Roda Viva, and Fogo De Chao when we lived in LA.

Hey Reid!! Long time no see!! My family and I just went to Tudo de Bom over the weekend for Mother's Day..... I thought that it wasn't all that special... It was an interesting concept, but the food was OK.... OH well... :)

Nice to hear from you again. If you do go to Greenfield's let me know how it is. The food and service here at Tudo De Bom aren't all that great. It's something different and I only come here when I want a change of pace. The quality of the food and the service has gone downhill since the place first opened.

Hi Queer Chef,

Welcome to the blog!

Ummm. I'm not sure, but there are a few Brazilians working there.

Hi Veruca Salt,

The meat selection is pretty good, but not of the best quality. It also takes a while for the food to make its way to the table...*sigh*

Hi AG,

Salsa moves? Ummmm. I'm not sure. I was there when I was MUCH younger! =P

The meat here would be good if it actually made its way to the table timely! =)

Hi Clinton,

I would think that Greenfield's is probably better. We used to have another Brazilian restaurant here a while back called Acqua. It was quite good.

Hi Queer Chef,

I'm glad you approve of the food.

Hi Will,

I didn't see plantains here and don't really find Brazilian food and Cuban food too similar. There are similar flavor profiles to both cuisines, but I think the method of preparation varies too much.

That said, I love Cuban food and miss the Cuban food that I had when I visited Miami in the late 90s.

Hi Clinton,

If you saw fried bananas, then they were probably fried plantains. I love them. *sigh*

Hi Milgwimper,

I'm sure you'd like fried plantains. There are two ways to prepare them. You can let them get over-ripe before frying them. They get carmelized and sweet. Or you can get green plantains, fry them. Take them out of the pan, smash them and fry them again. Take them out of the pan, sprinkle with salt and eat. They are really delicious alongside some black beans and rice.

Hi Ron,

Thanks for stopping by and for taking the time to leave a comment. It's been a while since I've posted regularly and I still have a few posts that need to be finished.

That said, no one can take the place of FatMan, but it will be nice to see someone else covering Korea. Good luck and thanks for the link to your site. I'll try to stop by soon.

Hi Przemek,

Welcome to the blog and good luck on your own blog. I appreciate your sharing the link to your site as I do enjoy reading about, and discovering new blogs.

Hope to see you around here again.

Hi Anthony,

This could definitely have been the case of too much meat (as it is in Brazil), but the service was much too slow to make that the case here. I think we got full on the buffet items (which weren't so good).

Hi Kirk,

Thanks! And thanks for your support! I think Tudo De Bom is a novelty in and of itself, especially since the food is served so slowly. I think the intent is to have the diners visit the buffet more so they have to give out less of the good stuff. Back when I was in Brazil, we could have this sort of dinner for four for less than US$20.00 and that included drinks!

Hi Robyn,

Thanks for the warm welcome and it's good to be back! I agree that it really isn't that special. It is a great concept and the experience would be much better if the service were better.

Reid,
You're probably right. Greenfield's has excellent service and may have at least half dozen waiters walking around serving different cuts of meats at any time. Cocktails are quite pricey (approz $7 - $8 for normal drinks) but the meats and buffet are above average. Used to have crab legs but no more. Only shrimp, and mussels. There were several hot entrees including sauteed oxtail and several soups. Lots of different salads and desserts. Not bad for $26.95 dinner. Usually a waiting line to get in and has valet service out front.

Hey Reid! Yea I know, it's been a while. :o) But glad to see you're still at it.

I love churrasco myself - as I'm sure all meat lovers do. Key to success here is freshness of meat, cut and timing - overdone and it's just a plain waste of meat. Anyway, it's unfortunate your experience at Tudo De Bom wasn't great. But then again, once you've had the REAL THING in Brazil, everywhere else pales by comparison, eh?

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